Of Shadows and Dragons (9 page)

Gruum’s mind was not his own. Within it, another dwelt, one that gibbered with insanity. His body was controlled by a malevolence the likes of which he had never known. Gruum and Duke Strad, their limbs powered by madness, rolled away the oak table together. Strad lurched to his knees, but no further, as the table still pinioned one foot.

Gruum—or what had been Gruum, grinned and reversed the poleaxe in his hand. He chopped away the Duke’s limb with three hard strokes. Strad was able to get to his feet then and begin a lumbering charge. He limped badly due to the missing foot.

Gruum followed him and when the Duke grappled with the back of Vosh’s legs, Gruum hacked at the Duke’s back, grinning all the while. He chopped and slashed and thrust with gleeful abandon. He sang at the top of his lungs while he worked, but never afterward could recall a single word of the song.

The Duke paid him no heed. His fingers—dead, unfeeling and driven with the strength of insanity, clung to Vosh’s tall legs.

Therian took full advantage of the lich’s imbalance. He managed to drive the towering skeleton to one knee, then prone.

Vosh drove his elbow back into the Duke’s head, crushing in one side. The cooked contents of Strad’s skull oozed out upon the stones. The Duke did not release his grip, however. His one remaining eyeball rolled in its socket and the last of his blackened teeth stayed clenched.

Gruum likewise did not give up on his mission. He scraped the last tatters of flesh from the Duke’s scapula.

Taking up Seeker with both hands, Therian spoke painful words. He struck again and again. Soon, one of the huge bone fists had been hacked off. The second grabbed him, but he hacked that one away as well.

“You have damaged me!” Vosh said.

“I will chop you to pieces,” Therian replied, smiling broadly.

“I cannot be slain.”

“I will separate every bone in your form,” Therian said. He set to work on the left elbow, ignoring the thumping it gave him. Mammoth bones cracked and split.

Gruum, for his part, slashed at the Duke’s exposed back, still ignoring Vosh and Therian. He set about cracking the vertebrae one at a time like walnuts.

“My bones will grow back together,” Vosh said, “after you have died of old age.”

“I will place them each in a different dimension,” Therian replied. “Time will stop and the Dragons will fight their final battle ere you are whole again.”

 “Stop! I would offer you an arrangement.”

“Why wait another year and another day to finish matters between us? You serve Yserth, I serve Anduin. Never can there be peace between us.”

“I know that which you seek. I know where it lies.”

Therian hesitated. “You dare speak of my Queen? Have a care, for you are in my power now.”

“Stop your depredations, and I will give her to you—and the child.”

Therian placed his boot upon the great neck of linked bone. He leaned close to what had been a face seven hundred years before.

“Speak, and your torment will end.”

Vosh told Therian where his bride had lain for many long months.

#

When Gruum was brought back to his senses, he found himself in the gray light of day. They were still within the walls of the hunting lodge, but behind the Great Hall. They were in a quiet spot circled with highborn graves. Gruum climbed to his feet.

“How is it I still live, milord?” he asked. His voice was scratchy, as if he had spent the night screaming. Perhaps, he thought, he had done just that.

“There are few enchantments two sorcerers can’t break when they wish to.”

“Vosh helped you?”

“Not willingly, but yes. He has moved on from this place now.”

“Where are we?”

“At my wife’s crypt.”

Gruum looked around, blinking in alarm. He saw only one grave that might qualify as a crypt. It was built of hand-carved stones and crusted with ice. The iron grille that covered the entrance had been torn open. Blackness and a faint odor of decay met them as Gruum followed Therian toward the opening.

“What’s inside, milord?” Gruum asked.

“Steps.”

“And where do they lead?”

“Downward, to a chamber.”

Smelling earth, frost and death, Gruum hesitated on the threshold of the tomb. He thought then to ask if either of them were still mad. “What of the Duke?” he asked instead.

“Strad would not cease to be, so I buried him—in several places.”

Gruum’s eyes traveled the tiny graveyard. There were indeed fresh spots dug down into the frozen ground. He wondered if Strad’s parts still twitched down there, where they had been buried. The idea made his stomach roll uneasily. When he looked back toward Therian, he found the other had vanished into the crypt.

“Come man,” Therian called. “I need your help. At the very least, its warmer down here.”

Gruum followed Therian downward into the earth. There were indeed steps within. They were very steep, and went winding down in a spiral. The ceiling was so close overhead he had to duck down to pass within.

They found Therian’s Queen on a slab of marble in a chamber beneath the earth. She appeared to be sleeping. She wore a blue dress that had once been velvet and finely made. But now, the hem was soiled and ripped. The neck and bodice were stained with splatterings Gruum suspected might be old blood.

“Is she dead, milord?” Gruum asked.

“Oh yes,” said Therian. “I—I think this is as good a place as any to leave her.”

“I don’t want to leave mother,” said a very small voice behind them.

Gruum startled to hear the words. He whirled, one hand on the hilt of his saber. He tensed, but did not draw. He saw now the source of the words. There was a small child in a nightdress standing in a dark corner of the crypt.

“Who is this then?” Gruum asked.

“This is Nadja, my daughter.”

Gruum tried not to stare, but he failed. “She speaks? She can be no more than—”

“Time runs differently in some places, Gruum,” Therian said.

“You mean, they’ve been with—”

“I believe so,” Therian said, interrupting.

The little girl looked at them very seriously. “I do not want to leave mother,” she repeated.

“I am your father, Nadja. Your mother must rest here. I will speak no more about it.”

Nadja’s face was expressionless. Gruum was reminded of a glass doll. He noticed, examining her face further, that there were dark stains around her mouth. He almost shuddered, but controlled himself. What had the child supped upon down here in this cold, lightless tomb?

“Nadja,” Therian said as lightly as he was able. “Go upstairs now. I will join you. We will ride a horse together. After that, I will take you for a journey on a ship.”

“A ship?”

“Yes. Now head upstairs.”

The girl looked at them doubtfully. Gruum thought she was perhaps three years old. He could see she liked the idea of a horse ride and a voyage aboard a ship. She ran up the stairs. When she had gone, Therian turned to Gruum.

“Why have you brought me down here, sire?” Gruum asked in a whisper.

“I would ask you to aid me now, loyal Gruum,” said Therian.

“What would you have me do?”

“Wait until I take Nadja beyond the gates. Go upstairs and find the shaft of a spear. Or perhaps the leg of one of those stools the Duke was so fond of beating me with. Snap it so it splinters. Then bring it here—and do what must be done.”

Gruum stared at his master. Then his eyes crept to the Lady Sloan. She slept there so peacefully. She did not appear to have died, but she must have. He knew she was no longer the young thing full of life that she had once been. She was a monster now, beautiful or not.

“I will do as you ask, milord,” he heard himself saying.

Therian nodded, clasped his hand briefly, and mounted the steps.

Gruum was left staring at his hand. Never could he recall the King having made such a gesture before. Thinking of that helped get him through the vile task.

Gruum chose the oaken stool, splitting one of the stout legs with his sword. Oak, as he knew, was the strongest and split more easily than other types of hardwood. Making a hard, sharp point from the leg was a simple matter.

At the end, when he drove the point home, she opened her eyes and saw him.

“Gruum?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t truly know,” he whispered to her. “I’m sorry, milady.” Then he struck the stake again, and her eyes closed for good.

Gruum stepped back, panting. He wiped away a tear with the back of his hand. He eyed the wound where the stake had sunk in deeply. No blood issued there. She was as dry as a tomb inside.

Many long days of travel followed as the three made their way back to Corium. With each passing hour, the early winter grew more bitterly cold. By the time they’d reached Therian’s home isle, the sun was only a distant memory.

End of Hyborean Dragons, Book #3

The Swords of Corium

(Hyborean Dragons #4)

by

B. V. Larson

-1-

Gruum and Therian returned to Corium with Nadja in the spring. It had been an arduous journey. Gruum reflected that an unfortunate number of people had died to get them back to the silver towers of Therian’s palace—some innocent and some not. They had lost the
Innsmouth
in Kem, the ship having been confiscated by unfriendly locals. Chased overland northward for a hundred leagues, they’d come to another pirate’s den named Port Thaup. There they were able to secure passage out onto the open sea. After a few deadly detours, they’d managed to reach the island kingdom of Hyborea. The final leg of the trip involved hiking across the ice shelf that now surrounded the island completely in the winter months. Arriving at last at the gates of Corium, Gruum was surprised to see little fanfare. None of the citizenry seemed glad to witness their grim King’s return.

Gruum eyed the wretches that huddled inside the great walls of Corium as they passed through the portal. They were thin, even for Hyboreans. Their pale skins were ice-blue and they looked even colder than they usually did. Snow covered everything and everyone, as ubiquitous as sand coating a desert. Snow had to be shoveled over the walls and melted with unnatural fires every morning just so people could walk the streets unhindered.

“What are you thinking, Gruum?” Nadja asked him. She sat upon their sole surviving pony. Her pale fingers were wrapped into the pony’s blond mane.

Gruum startled. He led the pony by the bridle, and it puffed at him as he turned around to see the girl’s face. Gruum opened his mouth, but did not answer her immediately. He had been staring at the people as they passed through the lower districts, thinking how hopeless they looked. Not even the sight of their long lost King walking by lifted their dismal spirits. Therian walked ahead, talking to his guardsmen of events missed during the last year. The King appeared to be distracted and out of earshot, but Gruum knew better than to tell the girl his true thoughts.

“I’m thinking of the fine, hot dinner we’ll have when we get to the palace,” he told Nadja, giving her a smile. He glanced down at her fingers, as he had a hundred times before on their long journey. The girl’s hands were pink and full of blood, despite the bitter cold. She never wore gloves, saying they irritated her. Gruum had never understood how she kept from freezing.

“Humph,” Nadja said, “Dinner? I’m not thinking of that at all. I’m thinking of the games father has told me of.”

Gruum forced his smile to freeze on his face. He nodded encouragingly. Nadja was too young, in his opinion, to witness the blood sports the Hyboreans so reveled in. The games turned his stomach at times, especially when he felt sorry for those sentenced to participate for one minor infraction or another. He had to remind himself, not for the first time, that he was not Nadja’s father.

Therian turned and glanced back at Gruum and the girl. His daughter responded by waggling her bare fingers at him. Then she shoved her hands back into the horse’s snow-crusted mane.

Therian returned to his hushed conversation with the guardsmen. He did not acknowledge his daughter’s wave.

-2-

By nightfall they had reached the palace and Gruum headed down to the lowest levels of the south side. He paid two silver pieces and gratefully sank into his first hot bath in months. The tub itself was a natural one, a large, stone cavity filled with bubbling water. The cavity was almost big enough to swim within. Heated by infusions of sulfurous waters from deep beneath the earth, the baths of southern Corium were famed for their health-replenishing properties. Gruum didn’t know if they would heal his hurts, but the heat certainly felt good. It sank into his bones, which he believed had been permeated by frost all the way down to the marrow.

Dozing in the pool, Gruum nodded off momentarily. He immediately began to dream.

#

Gruum met Yserth the Red Dragon. The Dragon was greater in size and even more terrifying of aspect than Anduin was, when she took her natural form. Gruum stood upon a flat, muddy strip of land that bubbled with heat. He suspected the heat came from a source not unlike that which warmed Corium’s baths.

Looking up from the landscape, Gruum stared fixedly at the Dragon. Every red scale it wore was blackened by soot and many scales were large enough to serve a soldier as a kite shield. There were bony ridges around each of its huge orbits. The eyes within were yellow, with vertical slits for pupils. Gruum’s eyes met those of the Dragon, but he did not speak. The monster opened its mouth.

“You dare return?” Yserth asked. “Where is my promised gift, tiny mote of meat and dust?”

“I—I have none, lord Dragon,” Gruum managed to stammer out.

Yserth’s great claws moved forward, causing a sound like the falling of boulders upon sand. One step, then a second. The Red Dragon now loomed over Gruum, blocking out the ruddy sun that baked this world.

“How is it you slip in and out my realm so freely, when you are no sorcerer?” Yserth asked him.

Gruum could not answer the huge creature, such was his fright.

“It is not yet time for you to be here, traveler,” Yserth said. “In fact, I have grown weary of your visits. I will come to find
you
next time.”

The Dragon dipped its great head with the jaws yawning wide. Hot breath swept over Gruum. There was no escape, no way out of the expanse of the mouth, nor of the hot, muddy flatlands.

Gruum was swallowed alive.

END Excerpt

To purchase the entirety of the fourth book in the series, search for
The Swords of Corium
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